Cycling UK Forum

When our son got married a few years ago, I spoke to the hotel manager and suggested I put a sum of money behind the bar to pay for drinks.
She told me not to do it as she'd found it too wasteful, as people would often leave drinks unfinished and then simply go back for a fresh free one.
Between us we decided I'd buy everyone one drink each.

Everyone was very happy with the outcome (especially those close friends who I was happy to treat to a few more).

Most weddings I've been to have charged for drinks, usually after a glass of something for a toast.

softlips wrote: ↑19 Feb 2023, 7:15pm Most weddings I've been to have charged for drinks, usually after a glass of something for a toast.

This was the only one I've been to in about the last forty years with a pay bar.

Never heard of a free bar at a wedding personally. Mind you I've not been to many and usually being younger I found that I had a lot of older relatives who were very free with buying drinks!!

At mate's weddings I felt that they had enough expense paying for the day that I would not have been happy with them paying for a free bar anyway. I'm not a sponger, except with older generation relatives who actually had a lot of money anyway!!

The profligate wedding events - are these a modern remnant of the ages old "conspicuous consumption" thing, perhaps allied with the equally hoary old idea that a dad should pay a bloke for taking his second-class human, a daughter, from being a drain on his own household of chattels to be a chattel elsewhere?

Whatever, the habit of such weddings seems absolutely mad in a world such as that of today when younger folk can no longer get to buy a house, earn enough to bring up a child or pay the gas bill. And why preserve that egregious women-as-chattels notion?

Yes, I know that many women crave the wedding dress et al. I can't help emitting a "Cuh!"

Cugel the curmudgeonly tightwad.

You've got it all wrong! With the modern trend for parents to spend the inheritance or selfishly live too long in an old folk's home. Well modern young people just have one big blow out on the old folk's pound before they spend it on themselves. Quickly followed by a donation to their first, family home of their own.

They learnt from the me me me generation of the 80s! Lol

Shouldn't this be in 2 tier Britian thread? Pete 75 world and us plebs

wirral_cyclist wrote: ↑21 Feb 2023, 9:45pm Shouldn't this be in 2 tier Britian thread? Pete 75 world and us plebs

ha ha!

Perhaps he's like me, and became bored of that thread when it turned into a symposium on How To Avoid Inheritance Tax.

mattheus wrote: ↑22 Feb 2023, 8:30am

wirral_cyclist wrote: ↑21 Feb 2023, 9:45pm Shouldn't this be in 2 tier Britian thread? Pete 75 world and us plebs

ha ha!

Perhaps he's like me, and became bored of that thread when it turned into a symposium on How To Avoid Inheritance Tax.

Ah ha! Another freedumb I'd be legislating agin' - this spoiling of your very own children with large dollops of money. Give it to HMG for transfer to the nurses who may have to mend us in future. Or to a Large Traffic Policeman of little sympathy for car-loons (and no tolerance at all).

I try hard to hand over only small dollops of dosh to the offspring myself, although both daughters have large crowbars for the prying open of wallets. One also has a slit-purse knife.

Cugel, wallet as thin a a bit of charcuterie left out in the sun too long.

Cost of living: Wedding couples face tough choices as prices rocket

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-63986479

A long piece about how inflation is affecting the wedding industry. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to resolve the question of who pays for the booze

Most ingenious answer to this that I ever saw was when one of my cousins married. Aunt and Uncle were both genius home brewers and vintners, so they made every drop that was consumed, which was a great many drops, themselves. Not only that, but they did all of the catering too, the bulk was f the vegetables for that being grown by my uncle, a gardener by trade. They hired the venue, and my father and two other uncles were the band (and got in a lot of trouble at one point, because as the evening progressed, and they tested more of the home brew, the songs became rather ….. earthy, in places).

Cugel wrote: ↑22 Feb 2023, 10:33am

mattheus wrote: ↑22 Feb 2023, 8:30am

wirral_cyclist wrote: ↑21 Feb 2023, 9:45pm Shouldn't this be in 2 tier Britian thread? Pete 75 world and us plebs

ha ha!

Perhaps he's like me, and became bored of that thread when it turned into a symposium on How To Avoid Inheritance Tax.

Ah ha! Another freedumb I'd be legislating agin' - this spoiling of your very own children with large dollops of money. Give it to HMG for transfer to the nurses who may have to mend us in future. Or to a Large Traffic Policeman of little sympathy for car-loons (and no tolerance at all).

I try hard to hand over only small dollops of dosh to the offspring myself, although both daughters have large crowbars for the prying open of wallets. One also has a slit-purse knife.

Cugel, wallet as thin a a bit of charcuterie left out in the sun too long.

Inheritance should simply be taxed as income. Someone receiving an inheritance should have the amount included in their income assessed for tax in the year of receipt. That way avoidance would be much more difficult.

My parents married in April 1940 when my mother was twenty. Her outfit and those of her attendants were homemade from net curtains and furnishings. I always understood that this was because of rationing but I see that didn't start till later in the war.

Once went to a Mexican wedding where everything was free, but then again everyone chipped in with supplying or making something....

A free bar leads to excess and undermines budgeting . .People who expect a free bar are spongers and freeloaders ,and possibly alcohol dependent..